Island Heat

Excerpt From: Island Heat

“I thought you knew what you were doing! What kind of idiot takes passengers out on rough seas?” Elizabeth shouted at the drenched captain. “What do we do now, genius?”

What kind of passenger goes sailing without checking the weather for herself?

“Look, I told you before, Miss Doyle, storms can come up suddenly out here. Haven’t you ever heard of the Bermuda Triangle?” Steven tried to make light of their situation, but the look on the woman’s face went beyond furious—straight into murderous.

The tall, blonde-haired woman beside him was making life miserable in an already less than perfect situation. The storm had come up so suddenly there’d only been time for him to send one SOS to the mainland. That aside, neither one of them would be in their present predicament had she stayed below deck as he’d ordered. He’d never met a more contrary woman in all his thirty-five years. Even when he’d dealt with all kinds of personnel in the Navy, none of his experiences had prepared him for a raging, beautiful blonde, hell-bent on blaming him for their mutual stranding on the sandbar of an island. His charts hadn’t even shown the little plot of land existed. Their only hope was that someone had intercepted their distress call or that someone onboard the Magnum Magic knew how to use a GPS.

“How long do you think it’ll be before anyone finds us here…wherever here is?” Elizabeth swung her head around, splashing them both with droplets of water from her wet hair.

“I hate to tell you this, Miss Doyle, but I’m not sure where we are. I didn’t have time to check our bearings before we fell overboard. And that would never have happened if you hadn’t insisted on coming up from the cabin after I told you to stay put.”

“Oh, that’s just charming! Not only are you incompetent, but you’re lost as well?”

Holding onto the last thread of patience he had, Steven shook his head and looked around him. The island was habitable; there were coconut palms nearby. Their first concern was fresh water and food. The sun would be setting soon and they had to find someplace for shelter, preferably before dark.

“I suggest we stop arguing over something neither of us can do anything about. We were damn lucky this island was within swimming distance of the ship. The other passengers will tell the Coast Guard we fell overboard…which, I repeat, would never have happened if you had stayed where I told you to.”

“I didn’t like it below deck. I was feeling sort of ?”

“Seasick, right?” Steven smiled, interrupting her. He finally found a chink in the blonde’s armour.

“All right,” she relented, “so I’m not perfect. But I sure didn’t get us marooned on an island. God knows how far from civilisation we are. I took this vacation to get away from life, but this is ridiculous.”

“Not to be a nudge, but I repeat—the only reason I fell overboard, Miss Doyle, was because I was reaching for you. Neither of us should be here.” Elizabeth looked away.

“Anyway, it’s over and done,” Steven told her. “If it makes you feel any better, we probably won’t be here that long. When our engines died, I sent out a distress signal. I know we’re safe. Let’s just hope the other passengers are as lucky.”

“So…what do we do now?” Elizabeth wrung a stream of water from the hem of her soaking blouse.

Steven tried not to look at the luscious, unbound breasts revealed by the wet, thin cloth. She may as well have been wearing nothing at all for all the cover the garment offered. Her nipples peaked in the cool evening air. That was when he came to the conclusion that there were worse positions with which a man could be inflicted. As an ex Navy SEAL, he’d been in a few nasty spots. He checked his thoughts as he felt the blood rush to his cock. Survival was their first concern. “Look, let’s try to find some water and a place to bed down for the evening. The storm that put us here seems to have passed.”